10 best design feedback and annotation apps

The design process has evolved dramatically over the last few years. Dozens of powerful, flexible tools have emerged to streamline every stage of the design process. Despite all that advancement, gathering and acting on feedback remains one of the more painful parts of the design process.

Particularly when you’re dealing with remote clients, stakeholders, and team members. And it only gets more painful if those providing feedback aren’t all that web-savvy.

With that in mind, here’s a list of my favorite tools for recording and sharing design feedback faster, more easily, and more efficiently.

1. Highly

From the first screen you see, you know Highly's got a lovely aesthetic.

This simple and beautifully designed tool resembles Medium’s highlighting functionality, but freed from the walled garden to use anywhere on the web. While Highly’s design focuses on giving you the ability to capture inspiring or insightful quotes, then share and comment on them, it’s not hard to see how useful it might be in the design process.

Once you’ve installed the browser extension, you just hit the 1 key while browsing the web, then highlight. At the end of each highlight, a tooltip pops up to offer a number of sharing options.

The sharing UI does a great job focusing you on what your sharing, and where you can share it.

Highly’s basically one of my dream apps come true: a way to highlight and share amazing writing, and an easy way to build a commonplace book (a collection of said amazing writing) from the web.

Unfortunately, its focus on text can become a bit of a drawback for design feedback: if you want to comment on a design element, that won’t be immediately obvious. But it’s an awesome tool for providing content feedback, so it still plays a big role in my design review toolkit.

That’s also something I like about the app: there’s no need to take a massive screenshot, mark it up, then share the image. By skipping the screenshot, Highly feels faster and more seamless.

Pros

Free

Beautiful

Easy to share via several methods

Powerful content review tool

Not based on a “take screenshot, annotate image, share image” workflow

Cons

Focused on commenting on writing, which could cause confusion in providing design feedback

2. Nimbus

Nimbus has become a mainstay of my design process.

Nimbus Screenshot and Screencast has become a mainstay for me — and not just for providing feedback on designs. Its ability to take scrolling, whole-page screenshots makes it super-handy for building your portfolio, blogging, and screencasting too!

After you’ve taken your screenshot, you can edit and annotate the image, then save it, send it to Google Drive or Slack, or print it (I guess people still do that?).

Pros

Free browser extension

Takes full-page screenshots

Offers a variety of annotation methods

Diverse sharing and saving methods

Cons

It’s not pretty

Full-page screenshots with animations or fixed elements can get funky

Is screenshot based

3. Notable

Notable's either everything you're looking for, or way more than you need.

Notable boasts a ton of features, including built-in tools for screenshots, annotations, presentations, project management, user testing, and prototyping. Plus, if you’re the sort who likes to develop sites in the browser, you can collaborate on coded sites as well as flat prototypes! (Which might make it perfect for those of you with Pro or Team plans.)

Pros

Very, very robust feature set

Built specifically for design teams, so it’s got all the bells and whistles you want

Team-oriented

Cons

Premium app

Robust feature set may be far more than you need

4. Droplr

Droplr's like a friendlier, more collaborative Dropbox. With files that self-destruct.

Droplr caught my eye while researching this post, and I’m already loving it. You can use it in your browser alone, if you’d like, but I particularly love the menu bar app, which gives you quick access to your last few screenshots. It’s got all the features you expect from a screenshot and annotation tool, including screencasts. But you can also quickly make reaction GIFs, share a web page as an image, or quickly shorten a link, too.

I’m also a big fan of the fact that you can use the key combo Option + Shift + 4 then click and drag to screenshoot a specific area of your screen, and have the shot save to Droplr instead of your desktop.

And if you’ve ever seen my desktop or Dropbox, you’ll know I take a lot of screenshots.

Finally, screenshots self-destruct, which I think is a really smart feature. After all, screenshots are typically very of-the-moment, and otherwise sit around clogging up your hard drive for no good reason. And since you can choose to keep a particular image, you’ve got control.

Pros

Free

Pretty

Robust

Desktop app

Space saving (screenshots go to app, not desktop)

Cons

Self-destruct feature could backfire on you

5. Evernote Web Clipper

Web Clipper's a powerful research and bookmarking tool that can do double duty for feedback. And it's part of Evernote.

Evernote Web Clipper has also earned a permanent place in my design process. Like their headline implies, bookmarks have never felt like the right solution for saving the web. One reason being that, unless you’re using your bookmark bar efficiently, you never see — and hence, never think — about your bookmarks.

Evernote Web Clipper helps solve that problem by being part of an app you probably already use on the regular. And the ability to save, tag, and comment on the page is genius. Perfect for researching blog posts — particularly this kind of post.

The feature does try a little too hard at times, though. Attempting to display the web page within Evernote typically leads to a broken mess. But you’ll just click through to the site anyway.

Like Highly, this tool does suffer from a lack of specificity in shared content. Unless you’re commenting on a page at a high level alone, you’ll have to do some work to ensure your feedback comes across.

Pros

Nice integration with the browser makes it easy to use

Great for research, in addition to annotation

Better than bookmarks

Cons

Because you can’t indicate “this comment applies to this design element,” miscommunication can happen

6. Skitch

Another Evernote tool overcomes Web Clipper's limitations.

If you’re itching to use an Evernote product to share feedback and aren’t finding Web Clipper meets all your needs, try Skitch. It’s a dead-simple way to grab screenshots and add a variety of annotations, call attention to key areas of a design, and blur out sensitive details.

If you (or your client) already use Evernote, it’s a no-brainer due to its deep integration with the notetaking tool. Just download Skitch, then sign into Evernote, and Skitch will ask if you want to create a “Skitch” notebook and save your shots there. For those who dread installing yet another app (or remembering another email/password combo), this feature is key.

My favorite detail of the UI is how easy it is to embed your latest screenshot in other apps. Once you’ve added all your commentary, just click the tab at the bottom of the UI to drop it into another app, like Google Docs.

A click of the tab is all it takes to share away.

I can also add that Webflow’s support team relies on Skitch every day. So there’s that.

Pros

Free

Simple

Integrated with Evernote

Lots of annotation options, including blur

Desktop app

Cons

Counts toward your Evernote storage limit (and adds up fast!)

7. Redpen

Redpen's hero section gets its point across with some show-don't-tell functionality.

Redpen ticks all the boxes for an annotation and feedback tool, with a focus on simplicity and real-time (and asynchronous) feedback sessions among teammates. Plus it’s got a beautiful website, with a ton of personality, that just might inspire you to show people how your product works, instead of just telling them.

The trial-based pricing model could be a bit of a bummer for freelancers looking to not pay for a feedback tool they’ll only use intermittently, but the app’s more focused on team collaboration anyway.

8. Usersnap

While most of the above apps have focused on general annotation and design feedback workflows, Usersnap targets developers, QAs, and interdisciplinary teams building software and websites together.

In part, this is just a matter of framing: success stories focus on enterprise companies’ use of the app, and the copy focuses on reporting bugs. But it’s deeper than just framing, as you can “implement a JavaScript feedback widget on your website or make use of available plugins for leading content management systems.” The pricing model is also straight-up premium, so freelancers on a budget may want to look elsewhere.

9. Annotator

I wish the web had a copy editor. (Psst, it's two words, no hyphen, Annotators.)

If you’re comfortable with JavaScript and don’t want to ask your clients to install or join a third-party tool, you might just love Annotator. Once you’ve done the preparatory work of integrating it with your site, you can just send your in-progress site over to your clients or stakeholders, and they’ll automatically be able to comment all over the place.

Pros

Free and open-source

Doesn’t require clients to install or download anything

Lots of optional functionality to add when you need

Seems fairly simple (if you know what you’re doing)

Cons

Requires comfort with JavaScript

10. Bounce

I don't know about fun. But definitely easy. Stupid-easy, in fact.

If you want to make things stupid-easy on your clients (which happens to be an excellent idea), Bounce may be your absolute best bet. Just send them the link to Bounce, have them input the URL for your work in progress, and it pulls a screenshot for your client. Then, they just add their comments, save them, then copy a share URL to send back your way. Really couldn’t be easier.

Of course, that ease comes with a small price tag in terms of minimal functionality, but again, with clients, that might not be the worst thing.

It’s also worth noting that Bounce doubles as a canny marketing tool for Zurb’s more robust tool, Notable (see #3), so Bounce could get you caught up in a convo about Notable. Which might not be terrible, if you’re on a team.

Because Bounce handles the screenshot-taking part for you, it really is a very easy feedback tool.

One thing that could cause potential issues with Bounce: like Nimbus, Bounce creates full-page screenshots, which is awesome. But also potentially problematic if your page has animations, lazy-loading elements, or fixed elements. For example, in the screenshot of Muz.li above, cards “below the fold” were grayed out and lacked images, which could scare some clients (especially those who ask why all the website copy is in Latin).

How do you manage design feedback?

We’d love to hear all about the tips and tools you use to share and manage design feedback, so share them in the comments below!